I was the patient no one believed. Including me.
I trained as one of the first Black female pediatric surgeons in Texas. Nine years of it. I performed through everything, because I learned early that feeling was weakness and perfection was safety. I call that push-through voice the Overrider. She smiles when she is scared and overrides the signal for safety every single time, until she disappears from her own life. I was the best Overrider I ever met.
In 2014 I boarded a flight home already short of breath and told myself I would deal with it tomorrow, because I never missed work. By the time I landed I could not climb a flight of stairs. Both arteries to my lungs were blocked. I knew the signs. I teach the signs. And I still almost died, because somewhere in me a little girl had learned the work was worth more than she was.
At midlife I finally got the words. Autistic, diagnosed late, with alexithymia. I was not lost. I was unmapped. Nobody had ever handed me the map to my own nervous system.
